The Genius Behind the American Oligarchy - YouTube
Transcripts:
You would prefer the human race to endure, right? Uh, you're hesitating. Well, I Yes. I don't know. I I would This is Peter Teal. This is a long hesitation. So many hesitation. There's so many questions and questions. Should the human race survive? Uh, yes. Okay. But he's been a major player in Silicon Valley for a long, long time.
I'm Peter Teal. I build companies and I support people who are building new things from social networks to rocket ships. You might know him as the multi-billionaire who co-founded PayPal and Palanteer. As Facebook's first outside investor, the guy who funds out there projects like floating countries, private space travel, and the quest for immortality. Peter Teal rejects the idea that death is inevitable.
He wants to transform humanity. Transhumanism was this radical transformation where your human natural body gets transformed into an immortal body. We want you to be able to change your heart and change your mind and change your whole your whole body. But he also wants to change something else.
For decades, Teal has schemed from the shadows to reshape American politics. Tonight, I urge all of my fellow Americans to stand up and vote for Donald Trump. He bankrolled Trump's first campaign. He turbocharged JD Vance's career. Teal openly questions the democratic system, and he's declared that to him, freedom is incompatible with democracy.
His vision of an ideal society sounds more like an oligarchy, a country ruled by a few powerful rich people, or even just one. Today, his influence is rapidly expanding across the world. From the beginning of his career, he's been building tools to rewire how power works.
Palunteer, his brainchild, enables intelligence agencies and militaries to anticipate their enemy's next move before it's made. Maybe even your next move, too. None of this happened by accident. Peter Teio plays the long game. He's patiently planned his moves for decades, always several steps ahead. So, what does Peter Tio actually want? What's his problem with democracy? And is there an end game? This video is largely based on the research collected in The Contrarian: Peter Teal and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power by Max Chefkin. You'll find a link in the description.
New York City, 2010. A TV show has set up a night for Peter Teal to meet Gary Kasparov, one of the greatest chess players of all time. Teal and Kasparov have met before and get along well. They like chatting about politics, technology, and of course, chess. Peter Teal's a diehard chess fan. In fact, he's a national chess master.
He's admired the Grandmaster Kasparov since he was a teenager and the respect is mutual. Kasparov admires Teiel's intelligence and business sense is one of the probably most successful entrepreneurs of his generation. He is very aggressively investing. He looks for the future. Teal's legendary status in business is hard to overstate. His companies have created technologies that have changed the course of the modern world.
and his influence helped define tech, an industry that has produced millions of jobs and trillions of dollars of wealth. That night, Kasparov and Teal hit up a chess club. Teal plays a game of speed chess with the owner and wins. I'm totally embarrassed. You're embarrassed as well.
Kasparov suggests his chess skills are probably why Teal is such a successful businessman and why he tends to hire chess players for his companies. That's why he's hiring chess players. You know, Peter just told me the story then when they had his the IPO for PayPal. So, he did a simo for 10 employees of PayPal. And sure, TL is probably on to something.
Chess skills transfer well into the world of business. It's a game of strategy where it pays off to think several moves ahead. Skills that don't hurt in politics either. Sometime after this evening, Kasparov and Teal drift apart. Maybe the two don't have that much in common after all. It's not just that the Russian Kasparov is a way better chess player. He's also one of the world's most prominent pro-democracy activists.
He's a major thorn in Putin's sight, tirelessly campaigning for a freer Russia. So, I'm fighting to restore democracy in my country. Trump potential victory uh could threaten not only democracy in this country, but you know, democracy worldwide. And Peter Teio, well, kind of the opposite trajectory.
Critics warn he's emerging as a major threat to American democracy. Billionaires like Teal reshaping politics is terrifying. Connecting to airport Wi-Fi ranks way lower on the scale. But having your data floating around unprotected online is a threat you can actually do something about. This is where today's sponsor, NordVPN, comes in.
NordVPN encrypts your internet traffic so your personal data stays private. With the shopping season in full swing, think twice before clicking that deal that looks too good to be true. It can happen to anyone. Regular VPNs don't always protect you against fake web stores.
NordVPN's threat protection pro helps you avoid malware, hackers, and trackers, even when you're not connected to a VPN. It's a certified anti-ishing tool recognized by leading cyber security labs. Try NordVPN risk-free with a 30-day money back guarantee, and go to nordvpn.com/fernv for a huge discount plus four extra months. You can also scan this QR code or check the link in the description. Wait, did you actually just scan that QR code? Peter Teal is around 8 years old when his family arrives in Swakupmmont, a former German colony on Namibia's coast.
He moved here with his parents and brother after some years in Ohio. During the 1970s, the city is occupied by a parttheid South Africa. At the time, it's a town clinging to its German roots, where Hitler's birthday is still celebrated, and the Nazi salute is a casual greeting for some.
Peter's father, Klaus, takes an engineering job at a uranium mine just outside town. The mine is controversial and shrouded in secrecy. According to international law, South Africa isn't allowed to mine here, but they go ahead anyway, extracting Namibia's uranium as part of South Africa's nuclear weapons program.
The regime is secretly developing bombs to defend against a possible Soviet attack and to protect the apartheite way of life. According to a former British activist group, black laborers have worked at the mine under dangerous conditions. Meanwhile, white families like the Teals enjoy a privileged life. Brand new medical facilities, country club memberships, kids and private school.
Young Peter is reportedly first put in a whites only school in Johannesburg, then in a German language school in Swakobmmont, where the curriculum pushes a Christian nationalist worldview and even paints white South Africans as the real victims of the region. This is where Peter Teal spends formative years. It's a world where his family benefits from a white supremacist regime, where his father actively advances its military interests. A world where the founding belief is that some people are meant to rule and the majority must serve.
When Peter is 10, he and his family return to the US. Peter's developing into a classic nerd. He loves sci-fi and fantasy, especially Lord of the Rings. He's top of the class and becomes one of the country's top chess players under the age of 13.
It's not cool to be a nerd in the 70s and 80s, so Peter is reportedly bullied on the regular, but he knows he's smart and going places. His chessboard has a sticker that says born to win. Peter wants the best for himself, so he studies hard to get into the top university. At the time, Stanford is ranked number one in the US. When he makes it there in 1985, Stanford's a huge letdown.
Peter expects fellow overachievers, but finds a party scene instead. He'd rather hit the books than the bong, and he's once again teased for being a nerd. According to the author, Max Chefkin, many of the students he perceived as bullies also identify as liberals, a connection that reportedly sticks with him.
We in fact asked here ourselves, but didn't get a response. Peter developed into a Reaganup supporting conservative. The campus itself feels far too left-wing for him. Anti-Reagan and anti-aparttheide protests are prominent and Peter starts to clash with demonstrators.
In the contrarian, Chevkin describes how classmates recall at least one instance where Peter defended apart height as economically sound. An allegation that Teal has since denied. At the time, some defenders of aparttheight drew on libertarian arguments. Libertarians believe the best society maximizes personal and economic freedom while minimizing government control. They see free unregulated markets as the best way to allocate resources and drive innovation.
More radical libertarians value property rights and free markets above basically anything else. Critics say this leaves little room for values like social justice which are cast as secondary or even incompatible with a libertarian definition of freedom. From that perspective, a part height could be rationalized.
South Africa's systematic denial of civil rights was simply the price to pay for its higher level of wealth than neighboring countries. By Peter's sophomore year, he's known on campus as a hardcore libertarian. And though the 80s sees students increasingly advocate for race and gender equality, Stanford is not an entirely liberal institution.
It has a fair share of other conservative and libertarian students and faculty members during Peter's time there. Still, Chvkin describes Peter feeling like he's in the minority and that the dominant campus culture is hostile to people like him. So, he does what he'll keep doing throughout his life.
He builds a network of like-minded men, the beginnings of a network that will support him throughout his career, what will later be known as the so-called PayPal mafia. With 11 other conservative men, Peter launches a campus newspaper. The Stanford Review aims to stir things up. It regularly criticizes campus culture from a conservative perspective with a famously biting style.
Throughout Peter's time at Stanford, a few pieces especially stirred a pot. Chefin found a few examples in the Stanford archives that he wasn't allowed to reproduce. One columnist claimed that gay men engaged in unnatural sex. Another complaint when Stanford considered adding non-white authors to the western culture course, arguing it signaled the decline of the West.
One whole issue was devoted to passionately defending a student accused of statutory rape, who was later found guilty. Peter's not just looking to provoke. He wants money, power, and influence. And as its founding editor-inchief, the Stanford Review launches him into the public intellectual he's known as today. The paper captures the attention of high-profile conservatives, and a bit later, Peter gets a book deal.
The diversity myth is co-authored with David Sax, the student who wrote in defense of an accused racist in the Stanford Review. Nowadays, Sax is also an influential figure on the American right. He currently serves the Trump administration as the White House's AI and cryptozahar. The book argues that universities are dangerous breeding grounds for left-wing intellectual conformity, that nowadays real racism barely exists in America, and that diversity initiatives pose a threat to Western culture.
Sex and Teal have since apologized for some of the more controversial parts of the book. But these are the same anti-woke sentiments that are winning elections today. Immediately, you know, I ended woke totally. Everything woke turns to Our country will be woke no longer. Though Peter has plenty of gripes about Stanford, he stays on and graduates from its law school in 1992.
He moves to New York to begin his legal career. Only aiming for the best. His goal is to clerk for the Supreme Court. He's got top grades, his own influential paper, and connections to the right people. But it's not enough. I got interviews with two justices.
They normally interview eight people and select four as as clerks and I missed it with both and it felt like uh it was the absolute end of the world. Peter's not used to setbacks. He plunges into what he later described as a quarterlife crisis and briefly moves back in with his parents. But back on the West Coast, Peter proves he has a neck for turning losses into big wins. It's 1996. The tech industry is booming.
Silicon Valley is a place with endless possibilities, loads of investor money, and above all, unclear rules. Peter wants in. Sure, he can't really code, but he can hand that off on someone else. Peter studies up on hedge fund management, raises some capital, and reinvents himself as an investor. At the same time, he continues publishing anti-woke columns. One that claims Indigenous People's Day is anti-western winds up in the Wall Street Journal.
By chance, Peter meets the brilliant young cryptographer Max Leftchin. Max is obsessed with Palm Pilots, clunky little handheld computers. At the time, they're barely more than a calendar with an internet connection. Not all investors would listen to a 20-some jabber away about Palm Pilots, but Peter is not a typical investor.
Max believes Palm Pilots will have way more potential if they can be linked to businesses. If personal devices were linked to a business's infrastructure, a whole new world of users would open up, like connecting an individual directly with a bank.
All someone needs to figure out is how to build an encrypted network that can securely link a handheld device with a corporate system. And Max believes he can do it. He is way ahead of his time. And Peter sees the potential immediately. He offers Max a4 million investment the very next day. Peter will become known for these big bets on inexperienced founders. Bats that very often pay off.
On the surface, PayPal looks just like another convenient way to pay. But in reality, it was built on a radically libertarian vision. Money moving freely beyond government control. The same vision that would later drive the crypto movement. And just like crypto, that freedom quickly attracts the gray areas of the economy.
PayPal's early growth comes from industries most banks avoided like gambling and NSFW stuff. Good thing Peter's been nurturing his political connections. As Chfkin tells it, Teal worked to keep his business alive by lobbying Congress to keep online gambling legal and to stop PayPal from being treated as a national bank. We also asked Peter Teal directly about this, but didn't get a response either. E-commerce is exploding in popularity.
There's high demand for a tool that can simplify online transaction. And Max and Peter aren't the only ones working on a solution. PayPal isn't even the only online payment startup in the same building. There's a very similar company on the same floor. It's called X.
com, and its founder has a lot in common with Peter. Most notably, Elon Musk is also an enterprising immigrant with roots in South Africa. Like Peter, he also shows little regard for traditional rules of the banking industry. Playing by every rule only slows down growth. But for a while, they have no idea what each other's companies are for until a PayPal employee finds a business plan for X.
com in a dumpster. And then it becomes impossible to ignore each other. They become two of the biggest fish in the sea of online payments. PayPal's growing rapidly, but at the same time bleeding funds. Every new user gets a cash bonus. Most transactions rack up fees and servers are expensive.
Worse, the anonymity that makes PayPal attractive also opens the door to credit card fraud, and PayPal would have to refund the victim's stolen money. Max left in response by building an anti-fraud system called Eigor, software that flex suspicious patterns and blocks scam transactions. All the while, user anonymity is still preserved.
Igor successfully curbs fraud by half of what it was. The FBI takes interest in the technology and starts using the software to catch money launderers. Still, PayPal isn't profitable. Peter thinks he knows the answer. It has to become a monopoly. Eliminate competitors, dominate the market, and set the rules. As Peter often puts it, competition is for losers. Competition is for losers.
Competition is for losers. This strategy will come to define Peter Teal's success. He'll outline it in the business best-selling book 0ero to one, and it will become a guiding principle in the tech industry. What I think everybody who is a founder or entrepreneur should aim to do is build a monopoly and uh and all the great companies um that people have built um are monopolies of one sort or another.
By 2000, the online payment space has grown more competitive and PayPal is still operating at a loss. Elon suggests a merger and Peter agrees. Uniting is their best chance for survival. According to the Contrarian, they clash from the start, over the name, over the software. Elon becomes CEO because he's a bigger shareholder, but Peter allegedly can't stand his leadership. He's said to think Elon's a reckless egoomaniac, and Elon is set to think Peter's a sociopath who only cares about money. Their battles stall the company's growth. So, Teal decides to end them.
Elon goes on his honeymoon, leaving the CEO position undefended. And in an elegant, calculated move, Peter captures it. Left and others loyal to Teal start voicing their gripes about Musk. They managed to convince enough board members to oust Musk and to insert Teal as temporary CEO, a position he'll keep.
It won't be Teal's last tactical takedown. As CEO of PayPal, Peter Teal is on a whole new playing field. In 2002, he secures a landmark deal. eBay acquires PayPal for $1.5 billion. Teal becomes a multi-millionaire at 35 years old, walking away with at least $55 million from the deal.
Now he has the capital and credibility to pursue his wildest dreams. The day he signs the deal is the day he also steps down as CEO. PayPal was just a stepping stone. Now he's ready to move on to bigger and bolder projects and to live the high life as a very rich person. He buys a silver Ferrari and fancy apartments. Now the formerly bullied kid is the life of the party. More and more people want to be in his orbit.
Teal's personal trajectory is skyrocketing, but the country is spiraling. In the wake of 9/11, Americans also face a recession, an unpopular war, and widespread trauma. Teal is anxious, too. He's increasingly concerned with the threat of religious terrorism. He finds the Bush administration isn't tough enough on Islam. His politics seem to shift.
At Stanford, he wrote fiery libertarian essays railing against government power. Now he's arguing the opposite, that the US must use extrajudicial methods to catch terrorists, as he put it, outside the checks and balances of representative democracy as described in high school textbooks. For Teal, the trade-off is clear. The West must compromise, more security, less freedom.
And he sees a business opportunity in it. What if Igor, the software mix left built to catch fraudsters, could be retoled to catch terrorists? Wouldn't the CIA be interested? In 2003, Teal gets a team to start working on it right away. They'll call the company Palanteer. In The Lord of the Rings, a Palanteer is a mythical stone that sees and communicates across far distances.
Sauron, the evil character who seeks to dominate Middle Earth, uses a palanteer to spy on enemies and conspire with allies. The power of Eisenard is at your command, Sauron, Lord of the Earth. Basically, Tal is offering Sauron's power to anyone who can afford it.
Palanteer's promise, use network analysis to find unforeseen patterns in vast troughs of data. This is especially interesting to US intelligence agencies who had collected information on al-Qaeda conspirators but failed to see the connection till after the attack. In the early years, many users are disappointed with Palanteer's service. But their timing is excellent with everyone terrified of another attack. And Teal's chosen CEO is excellent at raising money. His name is Alex Corp.
He's another former Stanford classmate. When Osama bin Laden is captured and killed, rumors circulate that Palunteer was used to find him. Public interest in the company skyrockets. Based on what's known today about Palanteer's abilities at the time, any meaningful involvement is questionable.
When media outlets ask Alex Kerp about that rumor, he's careful not to confirm or deny involvement. He tends to dodge the question with a smile and imply that some connection is there. Did your company helped to track and kill uh Osama bin Laden? When you open the paper and look in the news about these kind of things, there's a twothirds chance, depending on the country involved, that somehow my company was involved.
One media outlet isn't buying the hype. A gossipy blog called Gawker. According to Max Chefkin, Gawker's Silicon Valley page reports no real link between Palanteer and the Bin Laden raid and suggests the company spread the rumor just to boost sales.
Valleyweek is known for roasting the tech industry back when most news outlets tend to sing its praises. And a favorite target of Gawker's gossip and mockery is Peter Teio. Teal will take care of Gawker later. Beyond founding Palanteer, Teal spent the 2000s turning tech startups into giants. I was the sort of the first angel investor in Facebook and summer of 2004. The business was already tracking quite well. They only needed money to buy more computers. So I think that that was always sort of a promising sign.
In 2004, he becomes Facebook's first big investor. Teal not only funds the company, but becomes Zuckerberg's mentor. Now Zuckerberg is one of the richest people alive. And Teal's investment will net him about $400 million. Teal doesn't stop there. Through his network, he backs Airbnb, Spotify, SpaceX, and later Open AI.
In 2007, Teal seems to have spotted the financial crisis early. He bets against the US housing market. The gamble pays off. A 60% return in just 6 months. Banks will collapse and around 9 million Americans will lose their jobs. But for Teio, it's cause for celebration. According to Chefkin, he flies his stuff to Maui with unlimited taps for food, booze, massages, and surfing.
We asked Peter Teal if this is true, but he didn't answer. But Teal's golden run doesn't last. After a string of bad investments and mass redemptions, his hedge fund suffers huge losses and all but collapses. By 2011, he will have lost nearly 2/3 of his client's money. The crisis seems to make Teal more cynical.
In 2009, he writes that he still believes in libertarian principles, but no longer in democracy. I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible, he declares. He argues that America has been in decline since the 1920s when women gained the right to vote and when the Great Depression created mass unemployment. In his view, women and poor people are especially hostile to libertarian policies.
Their ability to vote stands in the way of his ideal society. The essay makes waves. Gawker media calls him a loopy libertarian, ridiculing him for wishing women couldn't vote. Tier later clarifies it's not that he wants to take one class of voters rights away. The problem is that Americans in general won't vote for libertarian policies. So better to do away with democracy altogether.
Meanwhile, Gawka media gleefully reports Teal's investment failures. They claim he exaggerates his net worth and make fun of his hypocrisies. Gawker reported on a lot of important topics other media outlets wouldn't touch till much later, like the crimes of Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein, but they also posted a lot of arguably cruel gossip.
In 2007, they outed teal sexual orientation with a post titled Peter Teal is totally gay people. Peter Teal's sexuality was an open secret at the time, but he didn't seem to want it reported. His outing was clearly a violation of privacy. According to the contrarian, Tiel sees Gawker's coverage as damaging to his business, and plenty of other people have grudges against the site. So, Tio quietly funds a team of lawyers to take up their cases.
The decisive moment comes in 2012 when Gawker publishes a leaked sex tape of the wrestler Hulk Hogan. Hogan sues and Teal secretly bankrolls the fight with $10 million. Hogan. The stage is set for a major courtroom battle. Hulk Hogan, former professional wrestler turned reality star, is taking on media website Gawker. Gawker is hit with just over $140 million in damages and files for bankruptcy in 2016.
Gawker Media is no more, and Teal is proud of his win, calling it the most philanthropic thing he's ever done. In an interview, he compares the journalists behind the company to terrorists. The world learned that it's dangerous to mess with Peter Teal. Reporters Without Borders called his feet a serious threat on freedom of the press.
Critics argue that this set a precedent for wealthy individuals to weaponize the courts and bury media that criticizes them. But Peter Teal is just getting started. It's often said that two things in life are certain, death and taxes. Well, Peter Teal disagrees. What others see as inevitabilities, Teal sees as problems to be solved.
He famously funds biotech companies pursuing life extension. His hatred of taxes hasn't poor resources into anti-ax political actions and also seasteading, man-made island nations free from income tax and governmental regulations. a floating libertarian utopia where he can escape systems he finds oppressive, an idea he has since abandoned.
He looks into other exit plans like a bunker in New Zealand, which he also later drops, and the chance for humanity to reach Mars. This becomes Peter Thiel's pattern, seeking escape. Escape from rules that govern everyone else. But escape on Peter Teal's scale doesn't come easily. Immortality research and space exploration require massive resources.
Changing tax laws requires massive influence. Fortunately for Tio, his wealth and influence have grown enormously. So he can attempt to reshape politics to enable his search for escape. In 2007, he does something unusual for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. He starts funding presidential candidates. His first big bet is the libertarian Ron Paul.
A longshot candidate for presidency, but a politician with a passionate base. Like Tio, Paul is an advocate for extreme free market capitalism. They're also both skeptical of climate change to different degrees. Ron Paul doesn't win the 2008 presidency. Obama does. In 2012, Ron Paul runs again. And this time, Teal is his biggest donor by a long shot. Teal wasn't really banking on Paul's win. Instead, he was thinking ahead.
In an interview with the magazine Slate from 2012, Teal says he was really campaigning for 2016, building up a strong libertarian base. Teal seems to want a candidate who will ensure his wealth will be protected, one who will grant more power to the tech industry, and one who shares his view that America is in decline and needs a strong man to become great again.
When Trump is revealed as the best candidate to promote those aims, Teal donates $1.25 million to his campaign. In 2016, Teal takes the stage at the Republican National Convention during prime time. Tonight, I urge all of my fellow Americans to stand up and vote for Donald Trump. Teal campaigns for Trump as if his views represented Silicon Valley. But at the time, Trump is deeply unpopular in tech.
Of the top tech companies in the valley, not a single CEO donates to Trump's 2016 campaign, and Teal's support of Trump makes him somewhat of a pariah. According to the Contrarian, friends cut ties with him or refuse to discuss politics. Teal is unbothered. They'll change their tune soon enough. Besides, he's starting to lean into his image as the Silicon Valley super villain. He reportedly once said, "I'd rather be seen as evil than incompetent.
" When Trump shocks the world by winning, Teal is part of the transition team. His role is to appoint people who will disrupt regulatory bodies like the Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration. A dream job for Teal, who's railed against governmental regulation for decades. Teal reportedly suggests 150 names to Trump.
According to Max Chefkin, his list includes to, no surprise, ultra libertarians, but also very controversial figures, fringe people from his growing network of far-right reactionaries. Trump only approves a handful of them, the least controversial suggestions that Teal makes.
So Teal's first attempt at capturing the White House seems to have failed. Politically, Teal retreats to the background for a bit. He and his partner have their first child and he seems to focus on family life for a while. But the background is where Peter Teal thrives the most. Outside of politics, Teal's businesses are skyrocketing, especially Palanteer. During CO, Palanteer wins government contracts to analyze pandemic data, tracking infections and vaccines.
In 2025, Business Insider reports that under the second Trump administration, ICC will use Palanteer to track down immigrants who overstate their visas. Palanteer's involvement has only intensified under Trump and has been instrumental for over a decade since Obama's second administration.
The Guardian reports in 2025 that Palanteer provides ICE with tools that help their agents fulfill Trump's aggressive deportation quotas using a vast data network. It includes government records such as text data from the IRS and private databases like location history from cell phone records.
Now, Palanteer also incorporates facial recognition data from Clear View AI, another startup where Peter Teal is the first investor. The pattern is clear. Palanteer thrives in chaos and chaos is only ramping up. What looks like a political setback with Trump may just be Tiel's chance to plan his next move. Teal won't back Trump's second campaign, but he will build up another politician.
We're effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made. Teal injects JD Vance's primary campaign with $15 million. Vance is now vice president of the United States. Teal and Vance's relationship didn't come out of nowhere.
Vance worked at one of Teal's companies and Teal became his mentor, as Vance himself says. And it was also Teal who brought JD Vance and Donald Trump together. After Trump is elected as president again in 2024, several members of the tech elite rally behind him. There's Elon Musk, who is against Trump in 2016 and becomes his most visible supporter in 2024.
There's Mark Zuckerberg, who abolishes fact checkers at Matter less than two weeks before Trump takes office. And there's Sunda Pikai, the CEO of Google, who donates $1 million to Trump just before inauguration. At the inauguration of Trump's second presidency in January 2025, major tech CEOs are clearly visible in the front row. But one person isn't there that day. He's in the background again, Peter Teal. Instead, he watches Palanteer stock skyrocket and topping the market for much of 2025.
The surge is in part fueled by government contracts. And not just in the US. Palanteer has been hired by Israeli forces, allegedly to enable AI powered targeting of Palestinians, which the company denies, and by Ukraine in its war against Russia. These and other contracts not only boost Palunteer's profits, they also give the company access to extremely sensitive data. Few assets carry more power or more potential for harm.
So, who decides how it's used? We reached out to Peter Teal as well as Palanteer because we had a lot of questions. Unfortunately, none of them were answered. In 2012, Peter Teio said, "One of the things I like about technology is that when technology is unregulated, you can change the world without getting approval from other people.
At its best, it's not subject to democratic control and not subject to the majority, which I think is often hostile to change. A recent venture Teal backed is called Arabore, a crypto bank named after the mountain in the Hobbit, where a murderous dragon hordes treasure. And now Trump is pushing one of Teal's wilder ideas, low tax freedom cities where corporations can operate without federal regulations.
We'll actually build new cities in our country again. These freedom cities will reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination. Freedom cities aren't just for making a lot of money. The goal is also to conduct research without governmental approval. One such place already exists, Prospera in Honduras. You already know who helped fund it.
The libertarian utopia Peter Teal dreams of no longer needs Mars or the open ocean. It's being built right in America.
Exploring the Vast World of Esotericism
Esotericism, often shrouded in mystery and intrigue, encompasses a wide array of spiritual and philosophical traditions that seek to delve into the hidden knowledge and deeper meanings of existence. It's a journey of self-discovery, spiritual growth, and the exploration of the interconnectedness of all things.
This mind map offers a glimpse into the vast landscape of esotericism, highlighting some of its major branches and key concepts. From Western traditions like Hermeticism and Kabbalah to Eastern philosophies like Hinduism and Taoism, each path offers unique insights and practices for those seeking a deeper understanding of themselves and the universe.
Whether you're drawn to the symbolism of alchemy, the mystical teachings of Gnosticism, or the transformative practices of yoga and meditation, esotericism invites you to embark on a journey of exploration and self-discovery. It's a path that encourages questioning, critical thinking, and direct personal experience, ultimately leading to a greater sense of meaning, purpose, and connection to the world around us.
π
Welcome to "The Chronically Online Algorithm"
1. Introduction: Your Guide to a Digital Wonderland
Welcome to "π¨π»πThe Chronically Online Algorithmπ½". From its header—a chaotic tapestry of emoticons and symbols—to its relentless posting schedule, the blog is a direct reflection of a mind processing a constant, high-volume stream of digital information. At first glance, it might seem like an indecipherable storm of links, videos, and cultural artifacts. Think of it as a living archive or a public digital scrapbook, charting a journey through a universe of interconnected ideas that span from ancient mysticism to cutting-edge technology and political commentary.
The purpose of this primer is to act as your guide. We will map out the main recurring themes that form the intellectual backbone of the blog, helping you navigate its vast and eclectic collection of content and find the topics that spark your own curiosity.
2. The Core Themes: A Map of the Territory
While the blog's content is incredibly diverse, it consistently revolves around a few central pillars of interest. These pillars are drawn from the author's "INTERESTORNADO," a list that reveals a deep fascination with hidden systems, alternative knowledge, and the future of humanity.
This guide will introduce you to the three major themes that anchor the blog's explorations:
* Esotericism & Spirituality
* Conspiracy & Alternative Theories
* Technology & Futurism
Let's begin our journey by exploring the first and most prominent theme: the search for hidden spiritual knowledge.
3. Theme 1: Esotericism & The Search for Hidden Knowledge
A significant portion of the blog is dedicated to Esotericism, which refers to spiritual traditions that explore hidden knowledge and the deeper, unseen meanings of existence. It is a path of self-discovery that encourages questioning and direct personal experience.
The blog itself offers a concise definition in its "map of the esoteric" section:
Esotericism, often shrouded in mystery and intrigue, encompasses a wide array of spiritual and philosophical traditions that seek to delve into the hidden knowledge and deeper meanings of existence. It's a journey of self-discovery, spiritual growth, and the exploration of the interconnectedness of all things.
The blog explores this theme through a variety of specific traditions. Among the many mentioned in the author's interests, a few key examples stand out:
* Gnosticism
* Hermeticism
* Tarot
Gnosticism, in particular, is a recurring topic. It represents an ancient spiritual movement focused on achieving salvation through direct, personal knowledge (gnosis) of the divine. A tangible example of the content you can expect is the post linking to the YouTube video, "Gnostic Immortality: You’ll NEVER Experience Death & Why They Buried It (full guide)". This focus on questioning established spiritual history provides a natural bridge to the blog's tendency to question the official narratives of our modern world.
4. Theme 2: Conspiracy & Alternative Theories - Questioning the Narrative
Flowing from its interest in hidden spiritual knowledge, the blog also encourages a deep skepticism of official stories in the material world. This is captured by the "Conspiracy Theory/Truth Movement" interest, which drives an exploration of alternative viewpoints on politics, hidden history, and unconventional science.
The content in this area is broad, serving as a repository for information that challenges mainstream perspectives. The following table highlights the breadth of this theme with specific examples found on the blog:
Topic Area Example Blog Post/Interest
Political & Economic Power "Who Owns America? Bernie Sanders Says the Quiet Part Out Loud"
Geopolitical Analysis ""Something UGLY Is About To Hit America..." | Whitney Webb"
Unconventional World Models "Flat Earth" from the interest list
This commitment to unearthing alternative information is further reflected in the site's organization, with content frequently categorized under labels like TRUTH and nwo. Just as the blog questions the past and present, it also speculates intensely about the future, particularly the role technology will play in shaping it.
5. Theme 3: Technology & Futurism - The Dawn of a New Era
The blog is deeply fascinated with the future, especially the transformative power of technology and artificial intelligence, as outlined in the "Technology & Futurism" interest category. It tracks the development of concepts that are poised to reshape human existence.
Here are three of the most significant futuristic concepts explored:
* Artificial Intelligence: The development of smart machines that can think and learn, a topic explored through interests like "AI Art".
* The Singularity: A hypothetical future point where technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilization.
* Simulation Theory: The philosophical idea that our perceived reality might be an artificial simulation, much like a highly advanced computer program.
Even within this high-tech focus, the blog maintains a sense of humor. In one chat snippet, an LLM (Large Language Model) is asked about the weather, to which it humorously replies, "I do not have access to the governments weapons, including weather modification." This blend of serious inquiry and playful commentary is central to how the blog connects its wide-ranging interests.
6. Putting It All Together: The "Chronically Online" Worldview
So, what is the connecting thread between ancient Gnosticism, modern geopolitical analysis, and future AI? The blog is built on a foundational curiosity about hidden systems. It investigates the unseen forces that shape our world, whether they are:
* Spiritual and metaphysical (Esotericism)
* Societal and political (Conspiracies)
* Technological and computational (AI & Futurism)
This is a space where a deep-dive analysis by geopolitical journalist Whitney Webb can appear on the same day as a video titled "15 Minutes of Celebrities Meeting Old Friends From Their Past." The underlying philosophy is that both are data points in the vast, interconnected information stream. It is a truly "chronically online" worldview, where everything is a potential clue to understanding the larger systems at play.
7. How to Start Your Exploration
For a new reader, the sheer volume of content can be overwhelming. Be prepared for the scale: the blog archives show thousands of posts per year (with over 2,600 in the first ten months of 2025 alone), making the navigation tools essential. Here are a few recommended starting points to begin your own journey of discovery:
1. Browse the Labels: The sidebar features a "Labels" section, the perfect way to find posts on specific topics. Look for tags like TRUTH and matrix for thematic content, but also explore more personal and humorous labels like fuckinghilarious!!!, labelwhore, or holyshitspirit to get a feel for the blog's unfiltered personality.
2. Check the Popular Posts: This section gives you a snapshot of what content is currently resonating most with other readers. It’s an excellent way to discover some of the blog's most compelling or timely finds.
3. Explore the Pages: The list of "Pages" at the top of the blog contains more permanent, curated collections of information. Look for descriptive pages like "libraries system esoterica" for curated resources, or more mysterious pages like OPERATIONNOITAREPO and COCTEAUTWINS=NAME that reflect the blog's scrapbook-like nature.
Now it's your turn. Dive in, follow the threads that intrigue you, and embrace the journey of discovery that "The Chronically Online Algorithm" has to offer.